Teaching Your Child to Read: #1 Picture Walk Through

Picture books are powerful tools to encourage beginning readers to make predictions and form inferences about a story. As a parent, a blessing that you can give your child is helping them find success and accomplishment in reading; using The Picture Walk Through Strategy can help you do just that, as you work to ignite their love for reading.

The Picture Walk Through Strategy

1. At first, it is helpful to begin with a familiar story to your child, one they comprehend well. Start at the beginning of the story and ask your child to tell you what happens on each page as you slowly walk through the story together. Here are a few helpful guiding questions to ask as you look through the pictures together:

What does the picture on the front make you think the story will be about?
Why do you think they are doing that?
What is that?
How do you think they feel here?
Why are they ____?
Do you think that ___ in the picture is important? Why?

*Note: This is a chance for your child to use a text they are familiar with to practice looking at the pictures and answering questions about. I realize they are not true predictions, however you want your child to find success and build their confidence.

2. Now, read the same story and talk about whether or not your “picture predictions” were correct. I suggest finding a couple that were correct and maybe only pointing out 1-2 that were not correct. You may want to practice this strategy with a few stories that are familiar to the child, depending on how well they do.

3. Next, you can begin using this strategy when your child has a new book. (The funny thing is that they actually already do this without even realizing it when they select a new book from the library and flip through it, to see if it looks interesting. In doing so, they have already made predictions about what they think might happen.) Here are a few guiding questions to ask as you look through the pictures together for the first time:

What does the picture on the front make you think the story will be about?
Why do you think they (the characters) are doing that?
What is that?
How do you think they feel here?
Why are they ____?
Do you think that ___ in the picture is important? Why?

*Note: After reading this, many of you probably realized you already do this with your children; without even realizing it! However, I wanted to include this in my Raising a Reader section because it is so important that you realize the benefits behind, so that you can keep those benefits in mind the next time you intentionally lead your child through a picture walk though!

Mackenzie is a follower of Jesus, wife, mama of two toddler boys, teacher at heart, and coffee lover. She was a lower school elementary teacher for over 6 years, with a master's degree in Reading, and is a certificated Reading Specialist. She currently works part-time at a private school allowing her more time at home with her little guys.

Mackenzie has blogged 532 posts here.